Denver Half Marathon

If you happened to stop by Half-Fast late on Friday or at some point over the weekend then you know that Candis and I ran the Denver Half Marathon on Sunday, and you also probably ought to find some more fun things to do on your weekends. Seriously, even I don’t stop by Half-Fast on the weekends (blatant lie). As you read on Friday evening, or whenever you stopped by (you loser) the plan was for me to pace with Candis since this was her first ever attempt at this distance.

Despite knowing better, we both decided that we needed new race shirts on Saturday evening so we headed down to the local running store and we both purchased some new shirts to run in. Fortunately there was no new-shirt chafing on Sunday morning. I bought a nice new neon yellow shirt that is actually painful to look at, because nothing screams “look at me, I crave attention!” like running in day-glo yellow. Unfortunately I chose not to run in this shirt on Sunday so you’ll have to wait until a later race for pictures. Your retinas will thank me.

After having read so much about negative splits lately, Candis wanted to try and use that strategy for the half marathon and printed out a customized pace band for me to wear so that I could keep us on track. The pace band indicated a final time of 2:17:15, and we crossed the finish line with an official time of 2:17:14 (10:28 pace). BAM! That’s how good I am at pacing! I brought Candis in 1 second under her ideal time. That’s why this post is not so much about how Candis ran her first ever half marathon, nor about how her fastest mile was her last, this post is all about me! I am a freakin’ awesome pacer. Seriously, just give me some balloons and add me to the Clif Bar Pace Team. If you want to hire me to pace you for your next event then be sure to let me know. All you have to do is pay my airfare (I prefer to travel first class), pay my hotel bill (a nice big suite), pay my race fees, and pay my “official pacer” fee (I’m thinking we’ll start this out at $1,000 and then increase it when the demand gets to be too high).

Candis ran a great race, but really how could she not when she had me at her side to pace her and give her unwanted advice. When we came to water stops, she ran on through and I slowed to get Gatorade and then caught back up to her (quite easily, I might add). I carried her sport beans and her inhaler and gave them to her whenever she needed them. I even took a picture of us running with my camera phone (see below). When someone got in her way I tripped them up, when someone tried to pass her I elbowed them in the throat, when someone tucked in behind us I assumed it was to stare at her butt and ran behind her to block the view. I was like a one man race support team, and I was good at it.

We crossed the finish line together and learned that Candis’ Dad had come down to watch us and we totally missed him. He was at the final turn before the finish and I think we were both in full tunnel vision mode by that point. We found him at the post race expo and thanked him for coming, I know it meant a lot to Candis that he came down to watch us. Candis has been downright giddy ever since. She just called me this morning at work and told me: “It’s Monday, the house is a mess, I’m cleaning, the boys are misbehaving, I’ve got a huge pile of laundry staring me down, but I just put my medal on and I couldn’t be happier.” It’s as though she’s proud of her accomplishment or something but I have to keep reminding her that it was really all because of me and my pacing.